With betting generally dominated at the moment by the Football and Tennis, the Rugby World Cup surely offers some interesting opportunities? I read yesterday that William Hill are offering 7/4 for England to be the highest finishing UK team. When you consider an out of form Ireland are likely to be battling Italy for a 2nd place finish in their group (setting up a quarter final show-down with last time out champions South Africa), Scotland are treading water against England and Argentine, and Wales face big hitting Fiji and Samoa to progress, this sounds like a great bet to me.

Chris Ashton is 18/1 (Ladbrokes) to be top try-scorer, a risk definitely but if he hits that glistening form we saw in the 6 nations I can see him hitting 3 each against Georgia and Romania with a punchy England back-line hopefully producing open and expansive matches.

Finally, the serial chokers of the WRC, New Zealand (see Paddy Powers ‘Will New Zealand stuff it up again’). Maybe we are clutching at straws, but I still wouldn’t touch them at 4/6 with Paddy Power; I saw their final competitive warm-up match against Australia the other week, and yes they fielded a slightly weakened team, but Australia absolutely smashed them off the park.

So my tips are… Back England & Chris Ashton, Lay New Zealand… who would know I’m an Englishman?